In present scenario changes in the climatic conditions due to global warming are key concern all over the world. There have been many steps taken by most of the countries and various parameters i.e. emission norms for vehicle, factories, industries, environment protection acts etc have been implemented to control the situation but with increasing population the energy consumption is also increasing as well as demands for automotive vehicles is also increasing. Vehicle exhaust gases carbon dioxide (CO2) and Nitrogen dioxide (No2) is the key factor for increase in the global warming and climate change.
Automotive industries control the vehicle emissions by implementation of the emission standards, which are the legal requirements governing air pollutants released into the atmosphere , sets by the respective government i.e. European standards, US standards or Bharat Stage etc. There are various innovation have been made in vehicles towards climate control and one of them is Electrical or hybrid vehicle (EVs) , which have been considered as a best solution to control the global warming but there are many challenges across automotive industries to substitute the current vehicles with EVs. Some of the challenges are:
- Lack of awareness and confidence on the E-Vehicles in small town and rural areas of many countries.
- Lack of availability of charging stations: In case of gasoline vehicle, customers have facility to fill the fuel on fuel stations with easiness but in EVs, battery has a limit to utilize and most of the countries don’t have facility to charge the battery on fuel pumps in cities.
- Long time to charge the batteries: In case of gasoline vehicle refilling of fuel takes a couple of minutes, but in E vehicle while traveling for long run, consumer have to wait for hours to fully charge the battery o.
- Lack of driving fun; Many people purchase car or other vehicles based on their drive fun like speed , engine pickup, noise, vibrations and comfort at higher speed but in case of EVs, people mostly consider it with golf cars which are slow and boring with less driving fun.
- Lack of Electricity production: Many of the countries do not have capacity to produce required electricity for 24×7 times due to lack of resources.
- Efficiency of these vehicles are quite good for expensive vehicles like Tesla Model S P100D which has claimed range of 500 Km on fully charged battery but in case of lower price vehicle efficiency is the key concern for the manufactures.
- While electric vehicles are said to be pollution free , but if we analyze the electricity production through coal energy , it will lead to increase in coal emission by increasing electricity production to meet the target demand , unless otherwise we increase the electricity production by renewable energy sources.
The future of EVs looks quite promising and challenging but with adequate research and development in right directions with technology solutions will help to reduce the dependency on fossils fuels and bring down the global pollution with controlled climate conditions.
Governments should also make policies and facilities that motivate the people to manufacture market and use the EVs at affordable price.
Shriram Kumar Tailor